We may not be alone. But our cosmic companions might be moist creatures in watery worlds -- lacking, of course, E.T.'s impulse, or ability, to phone home. The growing evidence of wet planets -- and its implications in our search for extraterrestrial life -- is among the marvels shared this weekend at a Santa Clara gathering of astronomers, astronauts and science fiction fans. The theme of the three-day SETIcon event: the exploration of universe and the quest to find life beyond Earth. Scientists agreed that the neighborhood is looking a lot friendlier. What began as a trickle of new planet...

Four years ago, Kent Couch made headlines by floating through the clouds in a lawn chair hoisted by party balloons from Oregon to Idaho. He's going to fly again, this time with a buddy sitting on a second lawn chair at his side. They are planning to take off July 14 from the parking lot of Couch's gas station and convenience store in Bend, Ore., the way he did in 2008 when he floated 235 miles to an Idaho farm field..."We can't hit above 18,000 feet (because of federal flight restrictions), but we can make a good run at, I...

A saucer-shaped object on a very wide flatbed truck had some people wondering if the government was moving a UFO in or near Washington, D.C., Wednesday night. The truck came south on I-270, then took the inner loop of the Capital Beltway from Montgomery County into Prince George's County. When motorists snapped photos of the strange object and posted them on Twitter, some people became concerned enough to call local police. One man called 911 in Prince George's County because, he said, he was concerned about a relative who lived along the route. Asked by a befuddled dispatcher what the...

ast week, in the corners of the Internet devoted to outer space, things started to get a little, well, hot. Voyager 1, the man-made object farthest away from Earth, was encountering a sharp uptick in the number of a certain kind of energetic particles around it. Had the spacecraft become the first human creation to "officially" leave the solar system? It's hard to overstate how wild an accomplishment this would be: A machine, built here on Earth by the brain- and handiwork of humans, has sailed from Florida, out of Earth's orbit, beyond Mars, beyond the gas giants of Jupiter...

As summer blockbuster season kicks into high gear, big-budget action movies like The Avengers, Battleship, and Prometheus remind us that there's one thing that unites Americans: Our shared fear of an alien attack. They also remind us that when the invading space fleet arrives, humanity is not going to surrender without a fight to our intergalactic invaders. Instead, we will band together to fight off their incredibly advanced weaponry with our ... well, with what, exactly? Are we really ready to battle our would-be alien overlords? Luckily, the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, better known as DARPA, as well...

Gary Connery: stuntman completes 2400ft skydive without a parachute A stuntman, Gary Connery, has become the first man to leap 2400 feet and safely land without using a parachute. The 42-year-old daredevil plunged from a helicopter in a death-defying feat before landing in an area containing 18,600 cardboard boxes. The father-of-two, a veteran of 880 sky dives, 450 base jumps and dozens of film and television roles, jumped this afternoon above Ridge Wood, Bucks to become the first person to jump from such a height and live without deploying a parachute. The entire flight of nearly a mile took less...

Astronomer Jill Tarter, the inspiration for heroine Ellie Arroway in the novel and movie "Contact," is retiring after spending 35 years scanning the heavens for signals from intelligent aliens. Tarter is stepping down as the director of the Center for SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Research at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., the organization's officials announced today (May 22). But rather than go lie on a beach somewhere,Tarter will continue to devote herself to the search for E.T. She's shifting into a full-time fundraising role for the SETI Institute, which had to shut down a set of alien-hunting...

Matt Kuchar wins the TPC with his Mom and his Wife and a bunch of kids around him on Mother's Day. He hit the shots and good for him. He will now be set for the next 5 years on the PGA tour. Kuchar has been a consistent guy in the Masters but had to go back to the "Q" school recently. He recently got a coach who "flattened out" his swing (note to all you Saturdat golfers - I did this too and it worked like a charm for accuracy).

A UFO, not behaving like a meteor, streaked across the skies of Arizona, causing many to call police. And for a local news team to head out of the studio to investigate. What was it? In a sign that mainstream media is beginning to pay serious attention to the unidentified flying object phenomenon, local Arizona TV news affiliate ABC15 did a two-minute news segment on the fireball which was reportedly streaking across the sky as the newscast aired live. Witness photographs and videos were shown on-screen, and this one, showing an irregular flight path of the object, was broadcast. The...

The Hubble Space Telescope has found a UFO, but this one is filled with stars instead of little green men. The iconic space telescope snapped an amazing new photo of the "UFO Galaxy" — a galaxy 35 million light-years from Earth that is officially known as NGC 2683. "NGC 2683 is a spiral galaxy seen almost edge-on, giving it the shape of a classic science fiction spaceship," NASA officials wrote in a recent image description. The galaxy was originally discovered on Feb. 5, 1788 by famed astronomer William Herschel. It is located in the Lynx constellation in the northern sky....

George Knapp was joined for the full four hours by David Paulides, a former lawman turned investigative journalist, for a discussion on a series of weird and odd disappearances in U.S. national parks and forests that no one can explain. -snip Acknowledging that animal attacks and accidents do occur in the forest, he contended that these disappearances are different because they leave no clues to suggest such prosaic explanations. Over the course of the evening, he detailed instances where people vanish within minutes, never to be seen again, and where bone fragments of victims were found, as if they'd been...

THE HAGUE, Netherlands, -- A Dutch man said he completed a flight of about 330 feet using homemade wings based on those of a bird. Jarno Smeets, 31, an engineer, said he controlled the 55-foot wings using two Nintendo Wii controllers, the accelerometers from an HTC Wildfire S smartphone and Turnigy motors when he took off Sunday at a park in The Hague and flew for about a minute. "Ever since I was a little boy I have been inspired by pioneers like Otto Lilienthal, Leonardo da Vinci and also my own grandfather," Smeets said. Smeets has been chronicling his...

Rare Star Trek Photos Show Green Orion Slavegirls Like You’ve Never Seen Them The original Star Trek pilot, "The Cage," included a lot more of the scenes where Vina is turned into a green Orion slavegirl who dances for Captain Pike — but they were cut because they were too saucy for prime time television. Now, some rare Trek behind-the-scenes pictures include a brand new look at the unshown parts of Vina's dance sequence. Including a part where the poor slavegirl gets whipped. Turns out being an Orion slavegirl isn't all dancing and quoting poetry. Tom Redlaw, aka Bird of...

Joining John B. Wells, paranormal researcher and philosopher, Jonathan Zap, will discuss how a disproportionate number of psychopaths on Wall St. and in govt. & corporate America are creating a culture with little concern for the future. First hour: Physicist George Hart will talk about stupefaction of society and what perpetuates it.

It would cost $852 quadrillion dollars to build a real Death Star That's 852 with 15 zeros following it. I know, that figure is insane. You know what that means. It means Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader were rolling in the money like filthy rich rappers. I guess ruling the Galactic Empire isn't so terrible when you're ballin'. Finally putting some questions to rest, the smart folk over at Centives calculated how much iron it would take to build the planet-destroying space station and even figured out how long it would take to build. Here's the reality-check breakdown: • Based...